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Lamb, Breast of, and Green Peas
INGREDIENTS for dish for 4 persons. -1 breast of lamb, a few slices of bacon, 1/2 pint of stock, 1 lemon, 1 onion, 1 bunch of savoury herbs, green-peas. AVERAGE COST, 10d. per lb.
Remove the skin from a breast of lamb, put it into a saucepan of boiling water, LAMB, BREAST OF. and let it simmer for 5 minutes. Take it out and lay it in cold water. Line the bottom of a stewpan with a few thin slices of bacon; lay the lamb on these; peel the lemon, cut it into slices, and put these on the meat, to keep it white and make it tender; cover with 1 or 2 more slices of bacon; add the stock, onion and herbs, and set it on a slow fire to simmer very gently until tender. Have ready some green peas, put these on a dish and place the lamb on the top of them. The appearance of this dish may be much improved by glazing the lamb, and spinach may be substituted for the peas when variety is desired.
TIME.-1½ hour.
LAMB CUTLETS. tion of this joint, for there is a little field for his judgment and dexterity which does not always occur in other joints. The separation of the shoulder from the breast is the first point to be attended to; this is done by passing the knife round the dotted line, as shown by the letters A, B, C, D and E, so as to cut through the skin, and then, by raising with a little force the shoulder, into which the fork should be firmly fixed, it will come away with just a little more exercise of the knife. In dividing the shoulder and breast, the carver should take care not to cut away too much of the meat from the latter, as that would rather spoil its appearance when the shoulder is removed.
The breast and shoulder being separated, SEASONABLE.-Grass lamb, from Easter it is usual to lay a small piece of butter to Michaelmas.
A braise of lamb breast on a bed of bacon and lemon, served over peas. The method is sound; the stated timing is the one thing that needs revisiting.
- The cutBreast of lamb is the belly flap, fatty and laced with cartilage. A whole one is a small joint, commonly somewhere between about 1.5 and 3 lb, and will feed four only modestly; ask the butcher to leave it whole and to remove the papery outer skin if you would rather not.
- TimingOne hour will not render a lamb breast tender. Allow 1.5 to 2 hours at a bare simmer, covered, and test by pushing a skewer through the thickest part; it should meet no resistance. The blanching step at the start takes 5 minutes only.
- Braise gently"A slow fire" means the liquid should barely tremble, no more than an occasional bubble. A hard boil tightens the muscle fibres and clouds the stock. An oven at 300F holds the temperature more evenly than a burner.
- The lemonPeeled and sliced lemon laid on the meat is doing two jobs: the acid softens the connective tissue and keeps the surface pale. Remove all pith or the braising liquid turns bitter over two hours.
- QuantitiesHalf a pint here is the imperial half-pint, 10 fl oz, roughly 1.25 US cups. It will not cover the meat, which is intended; this is a shallow braise, not a boil. Turn the meat once partway through.
- Green peasThe peas are cooked separately and used as a bed. Fresh shelled peas need 3-5 minutes in salted water; frozen need barely 2. Reckon on 1 lb shelled peas for four, and dress them with butter before the lamb goes on top.
- GlazingThe suggested glaze means reducing the strained braising liquid to a syrupy consistency and brushing it over the meat. Skim the fat off first, or the glaze will not cling. Alternatively press the cooked breast between two plates until cold, cut into fingers and brown them under a hot grill.
- Cost noteThe tenpence per pound is the period price given in the entry. Breast is generally reckoned one of the cheaper lamb cuts, as it still is, though the figure alone does not show how it compared with other joints.
Breast of lamb belongs to the Victorian economist's repertoire: a cheap, fatty cut redeemed by long slow cooking and served with something fresh and green to cut the richness. The pairing with new peas fixes it firmly in the spring calendar, and Beeton's own note on seasonable grass lamb, from Easter to Michaelmas, marks the same window, when lambs raised on pasture rather than in winter housing came to market alongside the first pea crop. Lining the pan with bacon and burying the meat under lemon is a technique inherited from earlier French braising practice, where the bacon supplies fat and the acid keeps light meats pale; eighteenth and nineteenth-century English cooks prized whiteness in veal and lamb as a mark of quality. The suggestion that spinach may stand in for peas is characteristic of the book's habit of offering a variant in a single closing line rather than a separate entry.